We spent the weekend at Killington and conditions were surprisingly
good. Conditions on the ground were strangely variable: some locations
in the trees would have tricky breakable crust, particularly those
locations which would have been untracked before this event began. Other
locations seemed almost soft (for a mixed event of this type, that is)
with a coating consisting of a mixture of loose granular sleet and more
bonded, edgeable dense crystals.

Patrol dropped the ropes on most of the glades I had a look at,
including Squeeze Play, Patsy's, Low Rider, The Throne, Somewhere,
Nowhere, Anarchy (marked thin cover) and Julio (marked thin cover.) I
didn't go into the last two, but conditions were good most everywhere
else (although it couldn't be called powder.)

Vertigo was the worst of the weekend, with the upper headwall a sheet of
ice. There was a way around the ice in a tight tree shot on the skeir's
left edge. I took this, but Lisa decided that falling down the ice was a
safer option than the trees...

N

Scott Braaten wrote:
> This is one odd list...new snow in the last 24 hours:
>
> Killington 10"
> Sugarbush 8"
> Stowe 7"
> Smuggs 5"
> MRG 4"
> Jay Peak 2"
>
> I've got my ideas on how this could've happened but its the exact opposite
> of most meteorological reasoning when a storm follows the track it did. I
> don't doubt it though as both Killington and Sugarbush are reporting solid
> numbers from central VT...MRG with 3-4" is half that of its neighbor. But
> there were some very odd micro-level stuff that happened in NY, too (like
> large changes in snow and ice accumulation in small spatial areas).
>
> Needless to say, my forecast of more ZR in the mtns rather than the valley
> was quite wrong. This was evident as we drove from Stowe to BTV yesterday.
> Driving sleet storm from Stowe to Waterbury, then into the downsloped
> Champlain Valley where it appeared compressional heating of the boundary
> layer was occurring on a SE wind as our temperature went from 23F (at the
> free cheese sample offering Cabot Annex Store in Waterbury Center) to 31F in
> Burlington. A good chunk of the lower levels was likely warming to near
> freezing in the valley (not allowing the droplet to refreeze on the way
> down) while deeper cold air stayed put east of the spine. Thus, mainly
> sleet in the mtns with freezing rain in the CPV.
>
> There was some good glaze driving home last night from just outside of
> Richmond to Burlington. Not much out there right now except some frozen
> cars that'll take some warming up to get the ice off.
>
> -Scott
>
> - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
> SkiVt-L is brought to you by the University of Vermont.
>
> To unsubscribe, visit http://list.uvm.edu/archives/skivt-l.html
>
>